Double takeout stings
Americans play rink finks knocking out Canadians in men’s curling, women’s hockey
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Maybe, in the grand scheme of things, there’s been a more crushing day for Canada at an Olympics.
Maybe Wayne Gretzky left to rot on a Nagano bench, or Ben Johnson’s positive test, bruised the national psyche more deeply.
So consider this only a ballpark pronouncement: Day 13 of the 2018 Winter Games qualified as Canada’s worst Olympic day ever. Or one of them. Consider the case. Thursday afternoon in Pyeongchang, the United States beat Canada for gold in hockey. In the evening, the United States dashed Canada’s hopes of gold in curling. Talk about a double takeout. On the same day Canada’s 16-year Olympic win streak in women’s hockey was dead-ended by the stateside archrival, Canada’s Kevin Koe, the two-time world curling champion, dropped his semifinal match to Wisconsin’s John Shuster, the zero-time world champion. The final score was 5-3. The consequence was gutting.
The loss meant Koe — along with teammates Marc Kennedy, Brent Laing and Ben Hebert — won’t have a chance to deliver a golden Canadian four-peat. It meant Koe won’t add his name to the vaunted list of Brad Jacobs, Kevin Martin and Brad Gushue, who respectively skipped Canada to gold in the 2014, 2010 and 2006.
And it added to the misery of Rachel Homan’s listless exit from the women’s tourney the day before, a failure that already ensured that, for the first time since curling became an Olympic fixture in 1998, Canada will fail to win hardware in both the men’s and women’s draws.
If the pressure of the national curling legacy undid Homan’s crew — and their uncharacteristically sub-par shot-making suggested something about the moment spooked them — there was every reason to believe it got the best of Koe’s team, too. Canada’s men looked understandably on edge all game.
“It’s a really f---ing hard game at this level,” said Kennedy, Koe’s third. “We’re playing guys that are playing really well. You’re not going to win every game. That’s just the way it is.”
Kennedy added, classily: “Sorry about the F-bomb.”
At least we’re still world-class at apologizing. Maybe we should have seen it coming. Shuster pretty much did.
He told reporters before the semi that Canada’s rink would be under additional strain because of Homan’s ouster.
“They probably are going to be feeling it a little bit,” Shuster said.
All of Canada’s feeling it now. As if to tweak the tender spot, Shuster said he and his rinkmates drew inspiration from spending part of their afternoon watching women’s hockey.
“(Watching the U.S. beat Canada in hockey) showed us anything is possible,” Shuster said. “We saw how much they enjoyed it . . . That was the mentality we had to have today.”
Koe’s rink didn’t look like they were enjoying themselves much on Thursday. Maybe that’s normal. But Kennedy spoke ominously in the lead-up to the match about how the Olympic semifinal was “the toughest game in curling.” For one, he reasoned, winning guarantees a medal while losing means a dreaded fourth-place finish remains a possibility — as it does for Koe, who’ll have to beat Switzerland for bronze on Friday.
For another, the Olympic-style semifinal format isn’t standard in the Canadian and world championships, where the top two seeds — and Canada came into the medal round here as the No. 2 seed behind No. 1 Sweden — get the privilege of a double-elimination format.
But while Kennedy and Hebert weathered the perils of the lessforgiving Olympic bracket when they won gold in 2010 with Martin’s rink, and while Koe had hoped their experience would make his quest for gold more credible, their presence wasn’t enough to pull out the win. The game came undone for Canada in the eighth end. That’s when Koe, holding the hammer tied 2-2, brushed a guard with his penultimate stone before coming up light in his last-rock draw with the U.S. lying two.
After that, Canada needed a miracle. None arrived.
“It’s hugely disappointing. What more can you say?” Koe said. “We don’t want to go home empty-handed. As much as this sucks right now, if we can come out and play well and win (bronze) and go home with a medal, that’ll take some of the sting off it.” Maybe a little. But on a day Canada’s neighbours to the south looked superior on the two kinds of rinks that matter (sorry, roller), all that was left to do for a patriotic Canadian was to cross one’s fingers for the men’s hockey squad in Friday’s semis, and re-thank the IOC for embracing mixed doubles.
“It’s overplayed that Canada’s a favourite,” Kennedy said.
“I mean, we come from a rich history of curling where we’ve won everything, and that’s not the way it is anymore.” Well, clearly. “This is the new normal for Canada,” Kennedy said. “And people need to get used to that . . . It’s not the end of the world. We’re not going to die. The sun will come up.
“And we’ve got to come out and try to win a bronze medal for Canada.”